


Fruit of the Lotus

by forthegreatergood



Series: Refugium [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Accidental Drug Use, First Time, Frottage, Getting Together, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 20:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20297464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: Sixty years is a long time to sleep--even for an immortal, and most especially if you’re not the immortal doing the sleeping.It's 1862, and a demon has finally woken up.“Stay with me, Crowley,” Aziraphale pleaded, his eyes glistening. “I’ve missed you so terribly, and there’s really no reason for you to go, is there?”“You’ve what?” Crowley stared at him, gaping stupidly at that crumpled face.  Aziraphale’s grip on his wrists didn’t slacken in the slightest, and he pulled Crowley closer without seeming to genuinely try.





	Fruit of the Lotus

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and the respective production and licensing companies.
> 
> * * *
> 
> A big thank-you to [foxyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk) for betaing!
> 
> Content notes: Aziraphale accidentally goes hard on a box of edibles. Nothing sexy happens until after he sobers up.

Crowley sighed and turned to the next page in the dossier the angel had compiled for him. Take one tiny, negligible, insignificant sixty-year nap, and suddenly it was a capital case. Hell hadn’t noticed, or at least hadn’t cared, but it seemed the angel had certainly done both in a rather excessive amount. 

Not that Crowley had too much cause for complaint, he supposed. He sneaked a glance around him at the comfortable bookshop. Aziraphale had insisted he read it here, ‘away from prying eyes,’ instead of using a dead drop or arranging a brief meeting at one of their usual spots, and Crowley had to admit the angel had done something of a number on the place.

The shelves were properly organized for once, the angel’s papers all tucked away in cubbies in some semblance of order, the furniture ready for use instead of needing to be excavated out from under decades of flotsam… The whole thing was a proper refuge now--quite a bit cozier and more welcoming than it had been the last time Crowley’d managed to wheedle an invitation inside. He doubted it was in the interest of commerce, though; Aziraphale had no more interest in parting with his hoard than he ever had.

Crowley’d made a joke about it once, about the angel being just as bound and determined as ever to get between mankind and knowledge, and Aziraphale had given him such a profoundly hurt look that he’d never dared bring it up again.

But now the shop was at least ready for guests, which was to his own benefit at the moment and to Satan only knew whose during regularly posted hours. Crowley checked on the angel out of the corner of his eye--completely absorbed in a slim novel all bound up in brocade and ribbon, a dreamy smile on his face, his tea steaming at his elbow in spite of having been there for a good half-hour, the dish of bonbons half-eaten. The whole scene made Crowley’s fingers itch for a charcoal pencil and some pastels, which didn’t bear thinking about--anything he sketched, he’d have to destroy. He couldn’t dare leave it about where someone might find it.

The angel turned the page and hummed contentedly. Crowley had no idea how Aziraphale was still awake; the overstuffed armchair that was clearly his favorite gave the impression of being the most comfortable place in all of London for a nap, even if one wasn’t naturally inclined toward sleeping. Just looking at it made Crowley feel boneless and drowsy, made him imagine what it would be like to coil around the arms and drape himself over the back, made him want to feel the upholstery on his scales. 

Aziraphale seemed largely immune to its charms as an inducement to sloth; the book in his hands wasn’t even drooping downward. But however awake he might be, he clearly wasn’t paying attention, and Crowley flicked his forked tongue out a few times in the most surreptitious way he could manage, tasting the air.

Under the familiar scent of parchment, ink, tea, and chocolate, under that irritatingly soothing bedrock of _angel_: pomade, perfume, powder. Champagne, port, truffles. Expensive tobacco, coffee, chocolate. And, there, the barest dash of opium.

Crowley made a show of turning back to the previous article Aziraphale had oh-so-helpfully clipped for him and looked around the bookshop again. Yes, now it would be quite the intimate little spot for a fashionable _salon_ or two, wouldn’t it? All those chairs freed up to be occupied by however many boisterous, glittering dandies and bright young things and intrepid female adventurers Aziraphale had managed to attract this time, all those books in a state to be admired and perhaps, if someone had really found favor with the angel, borrowed for a bit. Crowley should probably be flattered that Aziraphale had found the time to compile the packet in his hands, had had the wherewithal to notice the absence of a demon among the throng.

Not, Crowley thought, that Aziraphale really had to work at collecting his coteries of admirers and acquaintances. Not that he was doing it deliberately, either--no matter what ridiculous disguise he donned, no matter what indignities Heaven was dispatching him into this time, there was no cloaking the divine grace that poured from him in rich, warm waves. People were drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. 

And, while Aziraphale of course loved everyone--loved humanity in general--if one was the sort of person he very specifically _liked_ being around, if one’s presence brought the angel a particular joy, then that effect was magnified tenfold, and here they were, holding salons in the bookshop.

Crowley grimaced at the article’s content, then paged back to the beginning of the pile. There seemed to be absolutely no rhyme or reason to what the angel had thought would interest him. Some of it made perfect sense--a bishop disgraced here, a politician dead in an apparent suicide after a scandal there. One did need to keep an eye on who else was knocking around Earth, corrupting and tempting and ruining, after all. Others were a bit farther afield, concerning natural disasters or some new human invention, and the rest were frankly baffling. Why Crowley would need to know what a dickey was or what new revolt against common sense people had been committing with ties and cravats in the spring of 1832, he was sure he couldn’t begin to guess.

There was no asking, that was for certain, not with the way Aziraphale had presented it to him with such gravity, after making sure the shop was locked up tight as a treasury and all the shades were completely drawn. No criticizing it, either, not with the studied brusqueness in the angel’s voice when he’d said, “Finally decided to turn back up, then?” 

The next moment had seen Aziraphale fussing over Crowley’s choice of clothes and what he’d done with his hair, as if Crowley couldn’t have transformed into a serpent and slithered from one end of Cheapside to the other in broad daylight without anyone noticing, if he wanted. There’d been a rawness under it, though, and the angel’s eyes had been too searching, and Crowley suspected one less than complimentary word might be all it took to make those pink lips quiver and that beautiful face fall.

It had caused a damnably uncomfortable trickle of guilt in the back of his mind, all sorts of suspicions taking root in the fertile soil of a sixty-year blank. What loathsome task had Aziraphale gotten saddled with, without Crowley around to help him dodge the worst of it? What petty, needling demands had Heaven made, what sanctimonious scoldings had he endured, with no one to comfort him after?

Crowley flicked his tongue out again, tasting the perfume lingering in the air. Well, not _no one_, but no one with whom the angel could be completely honest, and false confessions and half-truths always seemed to make Aziraphale even more miserable than simply keeping everything bottled up. He always got so jittery and nervous and unhappy whenever he tried lying to Crowley that it was everything the demon could do not to take him in his arms and stroke his hair and tell him it was fine, that he understood, that it hardly mattered in any case. Utterly wretched, the fantasies the angel inspired. The actual execution of them was far better left to humans, with their vestigial sense of shame and their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lifespans and their extant capacity to be loved by the divine.

Of course if his bevy of humans hadn’t suited, if he’d been desperate, Aziraphale could have simply rung the bell until Crowley’d woken up. Though that was Aziraphale all over, wasn’t it? He _wouldn’t_, not without an explicit invitation, not with Crowley having made such a fuss right before about how much trouble he’d be in with Hell if he got caught helping an angel out of hot water. Not with how much care Aziraphale had taken to be sure no one would stumble on them this evening, while Crowley was supposed to be catching up on the better part of the century. 

Crowley grimaced. He’d wanted Aziraphale’s pretty gratitude, not his cautious distance. Well, what was done was done, and Crowley did have a bit of catching up to do, didn’t he? He rifled through the articles and notes. Nitroglycerin--there was something with a bit of potential. The vast majority of it murderously bad, of course, and Crowley would rather go for something a tad less overwhelming in its scale. There was something to the little advertisements for Vin Mariani that kept popping up alongside or on the reverse of the more recent clippings that seemed a bit more Crowley’s speed, but according to several of them, Heaven had already claimed coca for their side. Of course, it hadn’t been the first time the powers that be had done a bit of double-dipping--

Across the shop, in his plush, comfortable chair, Aziraphale giggled.

Crowley blinked, and his fingers stiffened around the dossier. The angel laughed, and occasionally the angel chortled, and on rare events after quite a bit to drink and exposure to some very broad comedy, a guffaw or two had been known to escape his lips. He very decidedly did not giggle.

Another silvery, hiccupy giggle burst into the silence of the shop, and this time Crowley turned in his chair, barely remembering in time to twist his spine like a human, all hips and shoulders, instead of simply coiling around in one long arch. The angel was smiling at the book in his hands, a fetching blush on his cheeks.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked quietly. “Everything all right?”

“Mmm?” Aziraphale looked up, his eyes unfocused and his smile softening. “Oh, yes, of course. Why--” He broke off and laughed again, then shook his head and sighed. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No reason,” Crowley said, shifting uneasily. The angel’s limbs seemed a bit looser than usual, and his mouth was verging into that delicate lushness it got after a long night of drinking and friendly conversation. “Just, you seem rather caught up in that book of yours.”

“Oh, yes.” Aziraphale gave him a beatific look, and there was an actual glow around the edges of it. “It’s got a very amusing drawing of a frog in fancy dress as an illustration.”

He held it up to show Crowley, and the demon slowly got to his feet. His first instinct was to run, which he refused to feel guilty about; his self-preservation instincts were one of the few things he really shared with the rest of Hell. It was practically a cardinal demonic virtue, knowing when to pack it in and save one’s own skin. His second instinct, which won out, was that something had gone dreadfully wrong somewhere and Aziraphale needed him to right it. Could angels have nervous breakdowns? Demons certainly could, and it was always monstrously ugly when it happened, but he’d have thought still being stuffed to the gills with divine grace would have acted as a sort of preventative.

Crowley came closer, warily, circling the angel’s chair in the small shop like he’d been summoned before Beelzebub’s throne. If angels could have nervous breakdowns, he supposed a frog dressed in an eerily accurate rabbit costume might do it. The artist must have been utterly out of his mind on laudanum when he’d drawn it.

But Aziraphale’s pupils were a great deal wider than they should have been, and Crowley hadn’t imagined the languid posture.

“Been at the wine already, have you?” he asked gently, taking the book from Aziraphale’s unresisting hands. He marked the angel’s place with the ribbon and set it aside. Except… he hadn’t smelled alcohol earlier, had he? Nothing fresh, at least. The champagne might have been flowing freely last night, but the angel had only had his tea and his chocolates this evening.

Aziraphale pouted. “I have not. I’d have shared, and I think you know it.”

Which, yes, Aziraphale would have shared, wouldn’t he? He was always nudging things in Crowley’s direction, always trying to get him to sample this, taste that, have a nibble of some new thing Aziraphale had discovered. Crowley hadn’t been surprised by the few recipes and restaurant recommendations that had made their way into the dossier. Not that he’d bother on his own, but it was a good idea to have a few reliable peace offerings ready to hand for the next time he annoyed the angel. Few things made Aziraphale as charmingly self-satisfied as when Crowley gave in to his whims and tried something on offer and then had to grudgingly admit that he had good taste.

But if Aziraphale hadn’t been drinking, then…

Crowley licked his lips. The smell of opium was stronger now. Opium, chocolate, and, under it all, a bit of hashish. He looked at the bonbons. Part of him was decidedly appreciative of the idea, and every other part of him was trying to pretend he was wrong about what he was smelling. How many of the damned things had Aziraphale eaten?

“Angel, I don’t suppose you remember where you got the candy?” Crowley asked. He’d been aiming for ‘polite and disinterested’ and landed somewhere in the vicinity of ‘confidential police informant,’ and it was a good thing for his reputation that the angel seemed to be in a forgiving mood, wasn’t it?

“Of course I do,” Aziraphale said, the pout evaporating. It was like the sun coming out from behind a rain cloud, and Crowley felt that it really wasn’t fair, the angel being even more beautiful when he was doped out of his skull. “A friend made them.” 

He nodded to the compact box sitting on the table by the register, and Crowley pounced on it. It was a simple confectioner’s box, with a neatly-inscribed card advising the writer’s bosom companion, Mr. Fell, that the enclosed would be a balm against his recent bout of melancholy. Well, one mystery solved, at least.

The box smelled rather more strongly of the drugs than the bonbons themselves; perhaps the paper had leeched a bit of it back out of the confections, and Crowley had only the choice of packaging to thank for the angel still being conscious.

“Recent bout of melancholy?” Crowley muttered.

“Oh, it wasn’t,” Aziraphale protested, crossing his arms. “I was just a bit down because of, well, _you_ know.”

He looked away and twisted his fingers in his waistcoat, and Crowley swallowed a noisy sigh. Of course the angel was in no state to recall that Crowley likely didn’t know anything, because he’d slept through it all and only made it a quarter of the way through the endless dossier. He put the card down on the counter and circled back to stand in front of Aziraphale.

“I think you might want to sober up a bit, angel,” he said. Aziraphale had eaten a quarter of the box, and Crowley rather doubted that his tolerance for opium, of all things, was terribly high. 

Crowley would offer to take care of it himself, but meddling with an angel’s corporation, especially given the circumstances, seemed like a frankly terrible idea. The last time he’d made any sort of move in that direction had been during the Revolution; he’d gone to heal the tender-looking bruises the chains had left, to spare Aziraphale the earful he’d get from Heaven over frivolous miracles. Aziraphale had shied away and looked at him like he’d reared up and bared his fangs without warning instead of offering to help. It had been such a long time since the angel had responded that way to a negligible display of demonic power, hadn’t it? It might as well have been a slap, and Aziraphale might be willful, but Crowley had never known him to be cruel--he could only assume there was some reason behind it, something more than angelic caprice.

Crowley hadn’t thought the gross matter their corporations were made of was so different, but the angel’s reaction had given him pause and made him rethink the assumption. Satan only knew what Heaven miracled a corporation out of, after all. Hell just used whatever was to hand and wasn’t radically incompatible with the true form of the demon in question.

“Sober up…?” Aziraphale frowned. “But I just told you, I haven’t been drinking. I did tell you that, didn’t I, Crowley? I was so sure I had.”

His expression was so mournful that Crowley had to check an immediate impulse to comfort him, and damn the over-enterprising chocolatier for that. “Yes, yes, you did. But it’s not that sort of drunk, angel--it’s the candy.”

“Crowley, you cannot get drunk off candy,” Aziraphale told him very seriously. “Nothing I included in the file could possibly have made you think that’s changed.”

“Not as such,” Crowley agreed, trying to mollify him. The last thing he needed right now was a meandering lecture on methods of vice available this decade. Tomorrow, certainly, he could use the update, but now was given over to rather more serious concerns, like the angel’s wellbeing. “But it’s rather like those tonics they’re making these days, isn’t it? If you put something else _in_ the candy, like, say, opium--”

“Be a dear and take your glasses off, would you?” Aziraphale interrupted. His brows were furrowed prettily, and his tone was very earnest, and Crowley hadn’t taken his glasses off around another person in well over a millennium. “It’s just that it’s very hard to have any sort of conversation with you when all I can see is two very small reflections of myself making fun of everything I’m saying.”

“Well, then.” Crowley exhaled slowly. “Can’t argue with that, I suppose.”

He could, of course, but he wasn’t likely to get anywhere. The angel was surprisingly tenacious with his little fancies even when they weren’t being lent an artificial piquancy. They’d started meeting in the park because Aziraphale enjoyed feeding the ducks and the bandstand because Aziraphale loved the sound of music carrying across a lawn, and he hadn’t tired of either in all the years they’d been doing this. And it wasn’t as if Aziraphale didn’t know what Crowley’s eyes looked like; hesitating in the face of the request was a bit ridiculous. Aziraphale knew what he looked like as a full-on serpent, for Satan’s sake. If he hadn’t recoiled from that, he wasn’t going to flinch away once the glasses were off, even if he was high as a kite.

Crowley took off his glasses and slid them into his breast pocket, and Aziraphale relaxed.

“There, now,” the angel said happily. “You have such wonderful eyes, Crowley, I don’t see why you’re always hiding them away.”

Crowley conjured up a reassuring smile. Poor thing would be extemporizing on the patterns of the wallpaper next.

“It makes life a bit easier, doesn’t it?” There were times, it seemed, when Aziraphale looked at him and even forgot, for a bit, that Crowley was a demon. Impossible, without the glasses on. “Now then, it’s your turn to be a dear--go ahead clear the opium and hash from your system, will you?”

Aziraphale frowned in concentration, then shook his head. “It’s no good, Crowley. I’m very much not drunk. In fact, I really feel quite wonderful.”

“I’m sure you do, angel,” Crowley said. He was also sure he could get his point across, if Aziraphale could just manage to come down the slightest bit. The angel was absurdly clever when he cared to be, and as much time as Crowley knew damn well he’d spent hanging around the fast sets in Babylon, Rome, Paris, and Cairo, Aziraphale _had_ to have seen something like this before. “But again, I know you’re not drunk. We’re in agreement, on that point. You’re still…” He rifled through the memories of when they’d been together over the last two or three thousand years. “You remember how people felt, standing too close to the vents at Delphi?”

Aziraphale’s nose wrinkled. “Ugh. That gas made you feel positively awful for days afterward. I still can’t believe you lied to me about it letting a person talk to God.”

“That’s not even slightly what I said, angel, and it’s your fault for only half-listening.” Aziraphale had been cross with him for an entire month over the effects of the gas, and then cross with him for another month after that when he’d refused to apologize and pointed out that it was unfair to blame him for Aziraphale’s own obtuseness. “This is like that, except you ate it instead of inhaling it. So if you can just get rid of it a bit--”

“But I don’t feel nauseous or swimmy or anything like that,” Aziraphale said. “And I don’t want to stop feeling nice. Why would I?”

“Ah.” Crowley shut his mouth with a snap. He hadn’t really considered the question, had he? It had been distressing him a bit, and he’d just assumed it would be distressing Aziraphale for reasons that, it turned out, didn’t hold up under even the mildest scrutiny. The angel had been doing quite well for himself until Crowley had intruded and started badgering him about it. He picked up the novel and went to give it back. “Well. I suppose if it’s not bothering you, and you’re enjoying yourself, then I’ll just show myself out and--”

And Aziraphale’s hands were suddenly around his wrist, novel completely overlooked. “Oh, you can’t be going already!”

The wounded disappointment on his face was genuine and awful, and Crowley immediately wanted to smooth it away, which was a different sort of awful. All the more sign it was time to leave, really--he got so dreadfully, dangerously soft around the angel. Especially when he was like this, everything about him putting Crowley in mind of a delicacy kept just out of reach, a plump apple Crowley would never regret biting into. He could devour the angel when he was like this, ravish him, give him everything he didn’t even realize he was begging for…

“It’s late,” Crowley sighed. It wasn’t, not really, but if Aziraphale was going to enjoy his little trip, he didn’t need Crowley skulking around in the background, pretending to read a packet of articles and staring at that lovely bemused smile whenever he thought he could get away with it. “You hardly need me here to titter over some amusing drawings.”

“Oh, do stay!” Aziraphale said. His eyes were wide and beseeching and breathtakingly innocent, and Crowley wished he’d never come.

He tried prying Aziraphale’s hands off his wrist. If he could extricate himself gracefully from the situation, it was entirely possible the angel would either have only the barest fuzzy, nonsensical memory of the evening the next morning, or be so embarrassed by his behavior that he pretended to. 

It would be like the time in Athens on that one particularly nasty winter’s night when they’d wound up sharing a bed--Aziraphale had been apologetic over not being able to charm the innkeeper out of an extra room, but not to the point of miracling up a second pallet. Crowley had woken in the middle of the night to find Aziraphale’s corporation twined around him and in something of a state, and it had taken every ounce of willpower at his disposal not to do anything even remotely enjoyable about it. Instead he’d elbowed Aziraphale half-awake and complained of being strangled, then rolled over and pretended to go back to sleep so the angel could sort himself out with minimum embarrassment. It had almost been worth it for the adorable blushes and nervous stammers Aziraphale had fallen into the next day, when Crowley asked him how he’d slept.

But that would be tomorrow, wouldn’t it? Right now, Aziraphale’s grip didn’t loosen, and his hands refused to budge, and damn the angel for making it so easy to forget how blessed strong he was. Crowley tugged at Aziraphale’s arm, which led to a momentary victory when Aziraphale let go with that hand, followed by an immediate defeat when he simply fastened it around Crowley’s other wrist. 

Crowley miracled the book back onto the side table and stood there, looking down at the ridiculous creature in front of him. Aziraphale’s soft fingertips slid under the cuffs of his shirt to press against his skin, and things like this were why he occasionally needed a sixty-year lie-down.

“Let go, angel,” Crowley said quietly. Aziraphale didn’t mean it, didn’t know what he was doing to Crowley when he did it, and that was on a good day. Crowley wouldn’t torture himself like this, not with the angel ripe for the taking and in no state whatsoever to actually succumb. Any breathy, panting _yes_ Crowley got out of him now would be the work of a guard he hadn’t meant to lower, a pleasant degree of muddled he hadn’t meant to get. 

Whatever comforts Aziraphale might want--might long for--from him, Crowley was quite sure the angel had yet to articulate them even to himself. It would’ve been treacherous ground for the most cunning of serpents, which... well. Crowley was relatively certain the most cunning of serpents did not find themselves in the sudden and unbreakable grip of an ethereal agent who could barely follow the conversation.

“Stay with me, Crowley,” Aziraphale pleaded, his eyes glistening. “I’ve missed you so terribly, and there’s really no reason for you to go, is there?”

“You’ve what?” Crowley stared at him, gaping stupidly at that crumpled face. Aziraphale’s grip on his wrists didn’t slacken in the slightest, and he pulled Crowley closer without seeming to genuinely try.

Aziraphale’s blush deepened, and he looked down at Crowley’s hands. He rubbed his thumbs over the bony knob of Crowley’s wrists, seeming entranced, and Crowley tried to breathe around his heart trying to beat right out of his chest. He needed Aziraphale to let go, to stop. He did. It was just that Aziraphale letting go, Aziraphale stopping, would also be unbearable.

_I’ve missed you so terribly._ He hadn’t imagined Aziraphale saying that, had he?

“Well, you’ve been gone such an awfully long time, haven’t you?” Aziraphale explained, his voice as soft as his hands. “And it’s different, somehow, when you’re gone. It’s so much worse than when I just haven’t seen you.”

He glanced at the table at which Crowley had been reading, and Crowley suddenly realized what a perfect line of sight that chair had on the nook in which he’d been ensconced. If Aziraphale hadn’t already been drifting into an opium haze, he’d have very definitely noticed Crowley flicking his tongue out like an animal scenting the breeze, and the shame scorching through Crowley’s blood was exactly why he needed to make the angel let go of him, wasn’t it?

“I didn’t even start clipping articles that made me think of you until five years had passed, and just look at that stack,” Aziraphale continued with a sigh. “I…” He chuckled and shook his head. “You know, I actually consulted a naturalist about hibernation in serpents?”

“It was just a bit of a nap, angel.” Crowley tried pulling his hands away, and this time Aziraphale let him. He took a preventative step back in case it was only a temporary reprieve. “If you’d needed me, you could have just rung the bell.”

“How was I to know?” Aziraphale let his hands fall to his lap, and he picked at the buttons on his jacket. “It’s apparently very bad for snakes to be roused too early, or out of season, or…”

He trailed off and looked up at Crowley, his lip quivering, and Crowley felt for a moment that the unannounced sleeping binge was the worst thing he’d ever done. He shook it off a heartbeat later; he’d done worse before he’d made it half a block from his front door that morning. Given a moment of clear thinking, Aziraphale could no doubt come up with quite a formidable list of worse things that Crowley had done.

“In any case, you shouldn’t do it,” Aziraphale finished. “She was very clear on that.”

“Not a snake, remember?” Crowley asked gruffly. “Demon. Can’t really hurt us, can you?”

Aziraphale’s brows knit, and he frowned as if he was trying to remember whether or not that was true and strongly suspecting that it wasn’t. “You’re not really going to leave, are you?”

“What would I do if I stayed?” Crowley reminded him. 

Not that Aziraphale necessarily needed the reminder, not with that flat, bald statement--“Demon.”--hanging in the air between them, but then again he was adrift in the clouds, getting mopey and maudlin over snakes turned out of their hibernacula. Crowley smiled, drew it out thin and sly, and spread his hands. 

“You’re feeling very nice right now, yeah?” he asked, his voice soft, and low, and so dripping with sweetness that the angel couldn’t possibly miss his meaning. “And I’m not nice at all, am I?”

Aziraphale blinked slowly, and not only had he found it in him to miss Crowley’s meaning, but there was an idea percolating away under that gorgeous mop of blond hair that Crowley was going to utterly hate, he could see it in the spots where the angel’s face was beginning to crinkle and shift into a smile of his own. Aziraphale picked up the dish of bonbons, very carefully, and held it out in Crowley’s direction.

“They’re really quite lovely, Crowley,” Aziraphale said shyly. “Won’t you have one?”

One. One to the angel’s… four? five? It would be just enough to weaken his resolve, just enough to talk himself into going along with something else the angel wouldn’t mean to say yes to. One was a fig leaf, a sugar-dusted excuse. 

And even if he took the rest of the plate, licked it clean for good measure, what then? He’d know what he was doing, when he did it--Aziraphale hadn’t. He could feel the weight of that difference, the vast gulf between Aziraphale saying, “Well, this has been horrible. Let’s get drunk!” and Crowley stumbling upon him already three sheets to the wind over some new awfulness straight from on high and Aziraphale saying, “Stand you a round!” Anything might happen when it was the former; the latter could only end with a gentle but very firm hand guiding the angel home afterwards.

“And then what?” Crowley asked, taking the plate from him and putting it back on the table. 

Aziraphale’s lips puckered in disappointment when he saw that Crowley was very much not going to have any of the candy, and he shifted back in his chair, uncertain. 

“I don’t know.” He brightened again after only a moment, his eye striking on inspiration in a pile of books. “Oh! We could stretch out on the couch by the fire, where the light is better. I could read to you--I just laid hands on a copy of the Bells’ poetry. I think you’d like it, if you gave it a chance. There’s such music in it, Crowley!”

Aziraphale sprang from his seat before Crowley could voice the _no_ forming on his tongue, and he made it all of two steps before he wobbled and had to stop, as steady on his feet as a newborn colt. Crowley caught him up when it seemed as if he might really fall, and Aziraphale’s grip on his arms was tight enough to be almost painful. He rested his cheek on Crowley’s shoulder and sighed, the sound too pleased for the situation.

“Be a dear and steer me toward the couch? I feel just a trifle faint.”

Aziraphale’s breath was warm against his throat, and Aziraphale’s body was pliant against his, and he should have fled when he’d had the chance, shouldn’t he? He’d have missed Aziraphale’s confession of concern, of missing him, but hearing that could only make this harder to weather. “Sober up, angel, please.”

“I don’t want to sober up,” Aziraphale murmured. “I want to sit on the couch by the fire and read to you.”

It was the work of a long and trying few minutes to guide the angel to the couch--he showed no inclination whatsoever to let go, and precious little hurry to reach their destination, and there was nowhere Crowley could touch him that wasn’t invitingly plush and covered in silk or velvet and completely, decadently _giving_. It was maddening, and by the end of it Crowley wanted to dump the rest of the bonbons back in their box, tie the whole parcel up with a brick, and send it crashing through the thoughtful sender’s blessed front window.

The only small consolation was that the couch was more of a loveseat, and with Aziraphale’s current and pronounced inability to manage his corporation, he was taking up decidedly more than half of it. Crowley would present him with his book, renew his excuses, and be gone from the shop as fast as if someone had consecrated it right under his nose. They could continue the discussion about why and how much Aziraphale had wanted to see him under more auspicious conditions, with a ready supply of wine in a private room at whatever unbearably posh place Aziraphale liked best.

“What was it you wanted, now?” Crowley asked, attempting to disentangle himself and failing. 

Aziraphale’s hands were back on Crowley’s wrists, and he was resting them peacefully in his lap. If it wasn’t for the saintly, satisfied glow shimmering around him like an almost physically visible halo, Crowley would have suspected the exquisite bastard was doing it of a purpose. But where anyone else might have been directing his hands with a cunning smile and in a very decidedly unsaintly direction, Aziraphale was simply beaming at him and holding him.

“Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,” Aziraphale said, nodding to the set of shelves closest to the overstuffed armchair. “It’s not terribly grand or large, I’m afraid, but I did have it bound in a brilliant scarlet. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”

“You do realize that you’re going to have to unhand me if I’m to fetch it for you, yes?” Crowley prompted. He twisted his wrists and Aziraphale pouted at him, but let go. 

He could feel Aziraphale’s drowsy gaze on him as he looked for the book in question, and that was a thought. If he was a few minutes about it, the warmth of the fire and the extra room of the loveseat might lead the angel to stretch out and sleep it off. Crowley took his time, running his fingers over the rough paper and buttery leather and rich cloth of all the bindings. Such love and care poured into this place--small wonder it shone like a beacon to all those bruised and tender hearts Aziraphale was always ministering to.

“Oh, there!” Aziraphale said, and there was a genuine delight in his voice that made Crowley feel like a bit of a heel for hoping he’d fall asleep. “Just where your hand is--a few inches to the left.”

Crowley let his fingertips trip over the spines between where he was and where the angel had directed him until they rested on the wanted volume. He slipped it from the shelf and made his way back to the loveseat, firming up his resolve. Here, with Aziraphale in such a state, was absolutely the last place either of them needed him to be.

“Here we are,” Crowley said lightly. He slid the book into Aziraphale’s hands and slipped his own into his pockets before the angel could get any ideas. “I trust you can keep yourself entertained--”

“Crowley.” Aziraphale made a moue, and Crowley wanted it kiss it right back off his face, which was probably also something the most cunning of serpents never had to deal with.

“Stubborn thing,” Crowley sighed. “You haven’t left me any room, and I’m not sitting on the floor.”

Aziraphale’s face went very still, and he looked down at the book in his hands. “There would be room, if…” He swallowed, and the tip of a very wet, very pink tongue darted out and moistened his lips. “That is, if you were to…”

“I’m not going to sit in your lap, angel,” Crowley said, as gently as he could, at the precise same time that Aziraphale blurted, “Transform into a serpent.”

They stared at one another in silence for what seemed like an eternity but must, judging by the quiet crackling of the fire behind its grate, have been scarcely a minute.

“What?” Crowley asked.

“What?” Aziraphale breathed.

“I think, all things considered, you can go first,” Crowley told him.

Aziraphale’s cheeks were almost as red as the book’s cover, and he couldn’t meet Crowley’s gaze. 

“If you transformed back into a serpent, there would be plenty of room.” Then there was the flash of a pair of very blue, very sincere eyes, and Aziraphale was looking up with something approaching defiance. “And don’t say there wouldn’t be, I remember perfectly well how big you are in that shape.”

“I, ah.” Leave it to Aziraphale to swallow enough drugs to stun a horse and then say something like that. 

Every time for the last six thousand years, he’d looked on Crowley and seen the serpent who’d ruined his perfect garden. Ruined his life, if they got right down to it--Crowley might consider a corporation and the run of the Earth a merciful and boundless upgrade from having to twiddle his thumbs and sing praises at an empty throne in Heaven, but it had clearly been meant as a sharp and certain demotion for the angel. And still, still, Aziraphale could miss him, could be concerned for him, could pat the upholstery next to the generous swell of that round hip and say _sit with me_.

“Crowley, please,” he said. There was something small and fragile in his tone, and somehow it reminded Crowley of nothing so much as what it was to be on the wrong end of a sword’s point, and why, _why_ had he not left the angel to giggle at his amusingly illustrated novel in peace? “Please, don’t make me ask again.”

And he couldn’t, could he? He could bluster, and he could writhe around the feeling of a shaft piercing his heart, and he could laugh as if it had been a joke, but in the end he’d do as the angel had asked, and he’d do it without needing to be asked a third time, and there was no sense in complicating things by making a big production out of it. 

And yet, he couldn’t bear the thought that this would be all Aziraphale saw when the angel looked at him for the next six thousand years.

Crowley tugged at his collar--had it been so constricting, so uncomfortable, when they’d started this conversation?--and looked away. “You said you wanted to read to me, angel?”

Aziraphale’s brows furrowed uncertainly, and then a flash of intuition struck him. He opened the book and paged through it, his eyes on the leaves as he turned them. Free of that dreadful sense of being observed, Crowley turned to face the fire and let his corporation shift and soften, flowing gratefully into that natural state. He forgot how trying it could be to wear a human’s shape for too long until he let himself resume the serpent’s.

Crowley wound his way up the frame of the loveseat, draping coils over the arm and the back, keeping a precise and deliberate distance from Aziraphale as he did so. He let his head hang over the far wing of the seat and watched the angel read. Aziraphale’s hand stretched out, his eyes still on the book, and stroked a long, gentle line down Crowley’s spine. 

Crowley stiffened involuntarily under it, muscles bunching under his scales at that undemanding caress. Aziraphale’s fingers burrowing under his cuffs, rubbing against his wrist, was nothing to the angel touching him like this. How long had it been? Crowley thought back. The warm earth, the drooping trumpets of flowers that smelled like honey and sunlight, the rattle of cicadas overflowing with the new joy of being alive, the soft, dark hand stroking his head without fear and the laughing voice asking him how he’d been missed when the animals were named. She’d called him beautiful, hadn’t she? 

_You have such wonderful eyes._

He shivered, and Aziraphale let his hand rest across Crowley’s ribs until the demon relaxed.

When Aziraphale began reading, his voice was quiet and steady, and Crowley could feel it rumbling through the angel’s hand and right into his bones. “Sit still--a word--a breath may break, as light airs stir a sleeping lake, the glassy calm that soothes my woes, the sweet, the deep, the full repose…”

He stopped and inclined his head, meeting Crowley’s eyes.

“Come now--my voice is all worn out from arguing with you, I can’t shout to be heard from all the way over there.” He patted his shoulder. “Rest your head here, and we’ll finish this without me having to strain.”

It would be different this time, wouldn’t it? He’d been invited in, the door opened for him. He’d convinced the angel of nothing, accepted a seat at the table without pretense or malice. Aziraphale knew him, knew who and what he was. And besides, if there had been a moment for successful argument, they were well past it now; he’d given too much ground to refuse Aziraphale this last small thing. 

Crowley slithered very slowly and very carefully along the back of the couch until he could lower his head and rest it--gingerly, lightly--on Aziraphale’s shoulder. The angel’s smile lit the room, and he reached up and ran delicate fingers over Crowley’s neck.

“Comfortable?”

“_Yesss._”

Aziraphale closed his eyes and shivered a little, and Crowley considered looping himself right off the back of the loveseat and out the door. He could have simply nodded, could have flicked his tongue against the angel’s ear and at least earned the shudder he’d gotten, but no, he’d had to go and hiss the answer like an idiot.

“Poor Eve never stood a chance,” Aziraphale said to himself. He turned and planted a small, chaste kiss at the hinge of Crowley’s jaw. “Now, where were we?”

He began again, and Crowley tried to listen to the words, but it was impossible not to get lost in the angel’s voice, in the angel’s glow, in the warm hum of the kiss the angel had given him. It was the opium, of course, or maybe the hashish, but it was no less sweet in the moment. It was impossible, too, not to finally relax into it when Aziraphale began stroking his back again, to lose that hesitancy that had made him tense at first. The angel’s hand was even warmer on his scales than it had been on his skin, and there was a deliberation to it now where it had felt heedless before.

By the time Aziraphale closed the book and set it aside, Crowley had let the angel tug him off the back of the couch and down around his shoulders like an oversized scarf, had in fact curled the excess length of himself in Aziraphale’s lap, and was quite content to rest there while the angel dozed in front of the fire. 

He’d slept rather long enough, it seemed; it was Aziraphale’s turn, now.

* * *

Aziraphale hadn’t meant to fall asleep, he was quite sure of that. He wasn’t even sure if he really _had_ fallen asleep, or if he’d just drifted a bit like he sometimes did when he was supremely comfortable. And he was supremely comfortable now, wasn’t he, stretched out on his couch in front of the warm remains of a dying fire, a delicious weight across his shoulders and thighs grounding him against the cushions. It had been so long since he’d been able to relax like this, since he’d been so completely free of that gnawing ache in his heart.

Last night must have been just what was needed to set things to right--a bit of time with Crowley tucked away in the back of the shop, somewhere Aziraphale could keep an eye on him and make sure there’d really been nothing more than demonic whim behind that horridly long hibernation of his, a bit of chocolate and an absurd trifle of a novel to while away the hours in Crowley’s company. When had Crowley gone home again, anyway? It must have been late, but there was a sort of filminess to the memory of Crowley’s voice saying _I’ll just show myself out_, a give around the edges when Aziraphale tried to put his finger on the time or what he’d been doing.

Which was odd, wasn’t it, but then, he had been a bit of a wreck lately. Aziraphale leaned into a slightly better position, not quite ready for that last step into full consciousness, that getting up and opening the shop and rekindling the fire and putting on the kettle for tea and greeting his neighbors and pretending everything was fine. That giving up of his current comfort.

The weight across his shoulders followed him into the lean, then kept shifting, lessening, moving of its own accord to free one of his upper arms. The cool, polished surface under his left hand moved, too, tensing and then relaxing again. If Aziraphale opened his eyes, he’d see his hand resting on black and red scales, see a serpent’s face watching him, have to disentangle himself from the serpent’s body, and oh, what had he _done_?

The shock of it was enough to clear the rest of the cobwebs from his brain. Crowley asking what was wrong, Crowley telling him he’d eaten what sounded like half an apothecary’s shop, Crowley trying to leave over and over again, and Aziraphale had held him fast and asked him to stay, and he’d… he’d come up with the brilliant solution that they should both stumble around in an opium-induced haze together. Offering a little dish of sweets to the serpent of Eden, Crowley taking it away from him with such a horrible gentleness before Aziraphale could embarrass himself any further…

Aziraphale had confessed about talking to the naturalist, too, hadn’t he? God help him, Crowley must think him such an awful fool. And Crowley had transformed because Aziraphale had _asked_ him to, practically _begged_ him to, had coaxed Crowley onto his shoulder like some sort of tame bird. Had Crowley really allowed him such familiarity, those slit-pupiled eyes somber and glowing gold against black in the firelight? Or had that been a trick of memory and wishful thinking?

This was almost as bad as that night in Athens when he’d been so worried about the cold and Crowley’s habit of sleeping like the dead that he’d lied about what could be had in the way of rooms, then suffered through the immediate punishment of waking to Crowley shrugging him off and growling about a too-heavy arm across his throat. It could have been so much worse, if Crowley hadn’t slept like the dead, if Crowley had roused enough to realize…

Aziraphale couldn’t say whether the insistent erection he’d had that night had been the result of curling up around Crowley like that, or the precipitating event, the reason he’d reached for Crowley in his sleep in the first place. He’d had the best of intentions, and then he’d given over to slumber, and it was only ever Crowley who could tempt him that way, wasn’t it? Crowley’s familiar frame stretched out beside him was the only thing that could make sleep seem appealing instead of vaguely terrifying; the smell of warm sun on scales that clung to Crowley’s skin no matter what his shape was the only thing that could provoke that unplanned, incidental burst of physical desire.

The thick coils in his lap moved, loosening to spill over his thighs, and the sudden change in pressure made Aziraphale’s eyes fly open. No, no, not _again_\--his corporation’s treachery knew no bounds, and it was suddenly so much worse than the night in Athens, because Crowley was very, very much awake this time.

“_Morning, angel,_” Crowley murmured, and it was all Aziraphale could do not to gasp. God help him, he’d forgotten what Crowley’s real voice sounded like, hadn’t he? It sounded the same way running his hands over Crowley’s scales felt, all cool silk and carnal promise and sinuous strength, and it was very much not helping with his current predicament. 

There’d been many times when he’d been grateful for how precisely his corporation responded to his will when he was with a lover, sharing that act of physical communion and spiritual comfort, that rapturous joining of two bodies as one--he’d always been able to satisfy them as well as enjoy himself thoroughly. He tried to remember that gratitude now, in the presence of the one creature with whom that masterful control always seemed to fail him.

“Crowley, what--” Aziraphale felt his voice cracking and stopped before he could embarrass himself with it.

“_Happened?_” That voice was smoke and honey in his ear, and Aziraphale could feel his cheeks warming. It sent a shiver down his spine and made him want to shed his corporation and meet Crowley in their natural states, and the wildness of the thought startled him.

“--time is it,” Aziraphale finished. His voice was steady now, at least. “I know what happened, and I’m so dreadfully sorry for the inconvenience.”

“_’sss no inconvenienssse, angel,_” Crowley sighed. His body rippled against Aziraphale’s shoulders, along his side, and across his lap, and Aziraphale clutched at him, trying to keep him from pressing against anything that might make it clear and no mistaking what the flush was about. He could still salvage this, if only he managed not to humiliate himself again. Then Crowley settled down, his head curling back around the wing of the couch to look Aziraphale in the eye. “_Jussst after dawn._”

“Oh. Well, then.” Aziraphale could just lift Crowley up and out of the way, couldn’t he--excuse himself for a moment to go make them some tea, get his corporation back under control, leave Crowley none the wiser about his state. His trousers weren’t so tightly fitted that Crowley was bound to notice, not if Aziraphale kept himself effaced on his way out of the room. They could discuss this with the dignity befitting agents of the divine and infernal. He would apologize in a meaningful way. He would keep himself in check as he carefully and cunningly investigated the meaning of Crowley’s tolerance of the evening’s liberties, perhaps explored Crowley’s willingness to _continue_ tolerating said liberties. It would be fine.

An awful, rebellious thought ran through his mind, coiling around him even tighter than the serpent--he could just as easily carry Crowley up to the boudoir above the shop, persuade him to transform back into his customary shape, ask him how it was that a demon might give in to lust. Crowley might laugh at him, but he wouldn’t say no, would he? Crowley wouldn’t say no, he was certain of it--if he asked, Crowley would let him.

Crowley would let him, but would Crowley want him?

The flush deepened as Aziraphale remembered every time Crowley had smiled that genuine, unaffected smile of his, every time Crowley had offered his arm while they walked together in the park in London, every time Crowley had made room for him on the couch at dinner in Rome, every time Crowley had looped a careful arm around his waist to keep him upright on a walk home in Paris. 

The demon had never been anything but the perfect gentleman when it mattered, had never used Aziraphale’s wanting as a weapon against him. As much of an unholy nuisance as Crowley could be about everything else under the sun, needling him and undermining his arguments and constantly questioning the divine plan, it was a sharp contrast. When it came to matters of the flesh, Crowley had always been so terribly, scrupulously tender about everything, and it was suddenly a very important difference to note.

Aziraphale reached up and rubbed the scales at the base of Crowley’s skull, and the serpent stared at him for a long, breathless moment before closing his eyes and inclining his head so that Aziraphale wasn’t working at quite so awkward an angle.

“_Ssstill inebriated, then?_” Crowley sighed after a minute.

“No,” Aziraphale told him. “Perfectly sober, I’m afraid.”

Crowley cracked one eye open and gave him a measuring look, and Aziraphale managed a small smile.

“I am sorry I made such a fuss about everything, though. It was meant to be a nice night in, not a trial of your patience,” he said. He moved down Crowley’s neck, stroking the limber, well-muscled arch gently. “I was thinking that I could make us some tea and try finishing that last poem. I think I drifted off barely a stanza in. Which one was it, do you remember?”

Crowley opened both eyes, and his tongue flicked out. “_You sssaid the title wasss Passsion._”

“Oh.” He’d been too bold by half, but there was still no judgement, no rejection, in those yellow eyes. Aziraphale bit his lip and tried to will his uncooperative corporation into a more befitting state. “Wasn’t even in the same room as subtle last night, was I?”

“_No._”

Aziraphale took a small breath and lowered his gaze. “Do you think you might transform back? Your voice, when you’re in this shape, it… it makes it very difficult to concentrate, you know.”

Difficult to concentrate, difficult to get ahold of himself, difficult to do more than wish he was braver than he was. He’d said so much he’d never meant to say, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t meant it when he’d said it. And if Crowley had taken it into stride, hadn’t pulled away or treated it as a triumph, that was something to take courage in.

“_Doesss it, now?_” Crowley asked innocently, and Aziraphale could swear there was a sardonic smile lurking around the edges of his mouth. It should have been impossible, to read the expressions on a serpent’s face, and yet here they were. He flicked his tongue out again, more slowly this time, and Aziraphale huffed.

He tried for a firmness he didn’t feel. “Stop teasing me and turn back, please?”

And then Crowley was, his corporation blurring and coming together in a completely different way until he looked human again, lithe and loose-limbed and sitting on Aziraphale’s lap. Aziraphale stiffened in shock, silently cursing his luck and his unruly corporation and his own failure to notice the extra ingredients in the candy.

“Better, angel?” Crowley shifted his weight, smirking. The moment he registered the thickness of Aziraphale’s cock against his flesh was writ plain on his face, in the startled blink of those golden eyes and the faint, becoming pink spreading across those cheeks. He’d never seen the demon actually blush before, had he? Astonishing, how much more human--how much more fragile--Crowley looked without his glasses. “I’ll, ah, start the tea, shall I?”

Crowley’s muscles tensed against Aziraphale’s body, his hands bracing against the back and arm of the couch, that prelude to separation pressing into Aziraphale’s thighs, and he wound his arms around Crowley’s waist. Just a few moments longer, that was all he asked. So much could be communicated, in just a few moments.

“There’s no hurry, I suppose,” he said, pitching his voice low. “Not on my account.”

“Are you sure, angel?” Crowley wasn’t moving, but Aziraphale could see the hammer of his pulse just under the delicate skin of his throat, feel the sudden shiver running through his frame. “Aftermath of the opium and all that.”

Precisely what he wanted, another opportunity for cowardice. He’d been too timid to wake Crowley up, too timid to demand an accounting, too timid to confess how badly it had upset him, and now he could, if he wanted, cap it all off by being too timid to admit to his own desire. 

“Maybe in a bit.” Aziraphale rested his chin on Crowley’s shoulder, and looked at him, and Crowley’s blush deepened. “I don’t need it right now.”

“You could still have it,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale felt the words humming through his skull as much as he heard them. Long, slender fingers combed gently through his hair, smoothing it down, then settled on his shoulder. “If you like.”

How was it that Crowley being kind always felt so much like Crowley being cruel? All those nights he’d walked Aziraphale home and left him aching at the door, all those times he’d done something to help or to amuse and then turned away instead of leaning in, all those times he’d offered comfort and asked nothing in return. All those times the demon had smiled at him and looked too long and then hovered just out of reach, rubbing Aziraphale’s face in precisely how little was keeping him from what he wanted.

_Let go, angel._

This time he hadn’t, and this time Crowley had stayed, was still staying.

Aziraphale’s arms tightened, and Crowley sighed, and relaxed, and stroked his hair. He turned his face to rest his cheek on Crowley’s shoulder instead of his chin, and Crowley rested his free hand lightly on Aziraphale’s knee and squeezed gently.

“Crowley,” he murmured, “I’ve missed you.”

The hand carding through his hair stopped at the nape of his neck, fingertips resting there, and Aziraphale was torn between staying right where he was and arching back against them.

“I’m sorry, angel.” Crowley curled his hand loosely around the back of Aziraphale’s neck. “I suppose I could make it up to you, if you want.” The pad of his thumb traced a small circle at the spot where Aziraphale’s hair grew short and fine, and any thought Aziraphale might have had about getting his corporation back under control evaporated. “Dinner at Sweetings tonight, my treat?”

Aziraphale lifted his head and gave the demon a reproachful look. The look on Crowley’s face was pure innocence--clean as the driven snow, capable of fooling an archangel.

A hundred and one retorts danced on the tip of Aziraphale’s tongue, but there was only one that would strike home. “Sixty years, Crowley. You worried me.”

Crowley’s eyelashes fluttered, and the hand on Aziraphale’s neck tightened, but he didn’t falter. “Dinner at Sweetings for the rest of the week, my treat?”

“Utterly unrepentant,” Aziraphale sighed, “and yet somehow I still want to kiss you.”

“Well.” Crowley twisted around until they were almost square, his haunches pressing maddeningly against Aziraphale’s cock and the beginnings of a wicked smile on his face. “It _is_ widely acknowledged that you have excellent taste, angel.”

As much of an invitation as he was likely to get, wasn’t it? Aziraphale inclined his head and stretched up to brush his lips over Crowley’s, and Crowley smiled against his mouth and pressed Aziraphale back into the cushions.

When Crowley let him back up for air, Aziraphale found himself painfully hard and wishing he’d given in to the earlier urge to carry Crowley upstairs. Crowley sat back, balancing his weight almost across Aziraphale’s knees, and surveyed the damage he’d wrought.

“How convenient that the curtains are drawn,” he murmured, a satisfied smile curving his lips. “You’re beautiful enough to strike someone blind right now, angel.”

“Flatterer,” Aziraphale said, but the heat spreading down his chest was real.

Crowley leaned closer, his mouth tucked just under Aziraphale’s ear and his hands sliding up Aziraphale’s thighs. Aziraphale wanted to flex into that touch, thrust against him, but there was no way to indulge the desire without risking Crowley toppling off him entirely. He dug his fingers into the small of Crowley’s back and pulled the demon against him, those lean thighs spreading to fit around Aziraphale’s hips. Crowley gasped and clung to him, and Aziraphale could have peaked from that alone.

And then a forked tongue flicked against the dip between collarbone and throat, and Crowley rocked against him. “_Ssshall I flatter you a bit more, dearessst?_”

Aziraphale groaned and thrust up, once, twice, and then he was spilling hot and wet against the cloth of his breeches, Crowley grinding down on him and panting against his skin. Aziraphale hugged him close when he shuddered through his own climax, murmuring endearments against Crowley’s shoulder until he went boneless and still in Aziraphale’s arms.

After a moment, his tongue flicked against Aziraphale’s earlobe, and Crowley chuckled at the shiver it provoked.

“_Have I earned your forgivenesss, then?_”

Aziraphale held him tight with one arm and tilted his chin up for a kiss with the other hand. “I suppose it’s a start.”

**Author's Note:**

> The poem Aziraphale is reading aloud is “The Wife’s Will,” by Charlotte Brontë. It was first published under the pen name of Currer Bell.


End file.
